“…It clearly helps people when you follow them. If you were an unpublished author trying to attract an agent (that’s another thing this community facilitates…connecting authors with editors and agents, since all three groups may use it), and you had a million Twitter follows, that’s a point of evidence that you already have a built-in audience.”

Tomorrow (as I write this), 30 January is a recurring day set up for just this purpose.

The basic idea is that authors pitch their completed but unsold science fiction/fantasy novels in a single tweet (well, you can tweet once per hour during the ten hour period…8:00 AM Eastern to 6:00 PM Eastern), and agents can read through the tweets (which are identified by the #SFFPit hashtag), and possibly express interest.

As you can imagine, to make this successful (communicating enough information for potential agents without a lot of extraneous noise), there have to be very specific guidelines for how it is done and abbreviations to be used. You can see all of that here:

If you are an author with a completed but unsold SFF novel, and/or an agent (hey, some people are both), I strongly recommend you read every word of the above page before pitching.

If you do pitch, good luck! I’d really appreciate you letting me know if you have success, especially if you first heard about it here. Even if you don’t have success, I’d be interested to hear about your experience. Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

* I link to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

Oh, certainly, traditionally, there are other people involved, but it’s more of a serial thing than a group thing. The author writes, then submits material to an editor, who makes comments, gives it back, the author revises solo, gives it back, and so on.

The same kind of thing can happen with “beta readers”. Those aren’t editors…they are more like a test audience for a TV show or movie. They give feedback…ideally, they let the author know what things they liked and didn’t like, what was confusing, and what was clear, but not how to fix it. That’s how it should work, but it’s not always that pure.

Some people do write as a team. My Significant Other would write an annual holiday song parody for work…my SO had good ideas and would know what topics to cover, and I would often refine the lines and add some humor.

It was also one of my favorite things about writing for a local (community access) show in San Francisco. It was actually a lot of fun to sit in a “writers’ room” (in someone’s house), and bounce ideas off each other and work collaboratively.

However, it’s always been complicated for writers of fiction to get that sort of feedback.

With Twitter, there’s a way to do it…and it can be a lot of fun! It’s not all work. 😉

I’ve been much more active on Twitter in the past year or so. That really hasn’t taken away writing time from other things…it tends to be catch as catch can, and just very short time needed each time…not something that works well for my blogging or other writing.

#1TweetExpert (I ask people if they could explain a concept in 1 tweet…and then do it myself the next day. When I’ve done enough of those, I may approach a Page-a-Day calendar company with them)

#SourceIt (I put in a quotation, and have people guess where it came from)

I just started #ILearnedReading (I think this could be fun, and a discovery tool. I tweet something I learned while reading, and link to the book…I don’t get a benefit from the link, that’s just for discovery’s sake)

#AlexaKnows

#TeachAlexa

The second one was there so I could text my This Day in Geeky History tweets…it ties into The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip although most of what gets tweeted I haven’t been able to add to TMCGTT yet. I also end up doing some more general things from that one, too…it’s hard to keep them that separated. No special #s for that one, really…just #OTD (On This Date), which is widely used.

Speaking of hashtags (#s), I think I should explain that a bit and how it ties into what I was saying about writers.

On Twitter, there are two main symbols that are used. They can be confusing:

# which is a way to basically index or highlight something. It’s mostly going to be for concepts. The purpose for it is to allow other people to find the tweet if they search for that particular hashtag

@ is a way to call the attention of a particular account (a person or organization) to your tweet. It addresses the tweet to that account

So, #StephenKing might be used by people discussing that author’s work. @StephenKing would be to address it to the author…doesn’t mean Stephen King is going to respond to you, but King could tell that something had been “sent”.

There are hashtags used by writers. They may be used socially, to find out about other writers, to announce a publication or signing with an agent, or they may be used to get help with something. On the latter, which may be of more interest to my readers, I see people asking for opinions about something a main character (MC) may do, or the use or the connotations of a particular word. Some of that is addressed to readers; some more to other writers (overcoming writer’s block, for one). There is a lot of talk about how to stay motivated writing, and how to balance writing and other parts of your life.

It’s worth noting on the latter topics that I don’t see “brand name” authors joining in on those, as a rule. Sure, the aforementioned @StephenKing tweets a lot, as does J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling), and they do interact with fans, but a lot of it seems to be political and societal issues, rather than the work-a-day world of writing.

That’s not to say that published authors aren’t part of the Twitter writing community! Many are, including tradpubbed (traditionally published) ones. I would say that the vast majority of involvement comes from people who are aspirationally writers, though…people who would like to be earning more as writers, or who simply want to be better writers without income being a specific goal. I know, I know…some of you think that everyone would like to earn more in their field or be better at it. 😉

Before I start listing some specific hashtags (and individual accounts), I want to mention one of my favorite things which happens: writing prompts. People will specifically prompt creative writing responses, maybe by posting a picture, or posing a scenario. There may be rules, such as is the case with a “Six word story” prompt…you have to keep your creative response down to six words or fewer.

I have great fun with those, and I get some good responses (retweets and likes). Unlike many people, I love rules! My Significant Other often kids me about how my family makes up complicated rules…our last name is Calvin, and yes, there may be some parallels with Calvinball from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip although the name is a coincidence.

I used to manage a gamestore (after I managed a bookstore), and games are all about the joy of rules.

Last thing before I list: following and liking. It clearly helps people when you follow them. If you were an unpublished author trying to attract an agent (that’s another thing this community facilitates…connecting authors with editors and agents, since all three groups may use it), and you had a million Twitter follows, that’s a point of evidence that you already have a built-in audience.

I follow a lot more people than follow me, and that’s fine with me. I’d almost always rather help people than be helped myself…I feel good helping people, they feel good because I helped them, so the net amount of joy in the world grows more quickly by my following than by my being followed. Isn’t growing the joy in the world a good justification for your existence? That’s a book that I have in my “Idea Garden”: Grow the Joy, which would be about ways to do that.

At TMCGTT, at time of writing, I’m following 4,490 and have 1,855 followers. At ILMK, it’s 4,732 following, and 2,481 followers. Would I like more followers? Sure, that would be nice. Quite unlikely it would catch up, though. If you like or retweet something, I’ll check your profile, and the vast majority of times, I’ll follow you. It’s okay if you have different political opinions than mine. I just had a weird thing with that, where I mentioned a fictional work, and didn’t realize it had become a symbol to a group of like-minded people. I was suddenly getting lots of followers…unintentionally. I tweeted about that, just because people might have gotten the wrong impression. Why do I choose not to follow someone? Mentions of alcohol in their profiles would be one…I don’t like to promote alcohol use, although I wouldn’t stop people from using it. I probably should learn to ignore that one. If I know your account is going to have a lot of NSFW (Not Safe For Work) pictures, I probably won’t follow you…that just complicates things. I can follow someone who has an obscenity in their profile (that happens a lot), but if you say something that is…condemnatory of a group of people, I won’t want to follow you. For example, use of the word that rhymes with witch will be a big negative.

Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks…er, hashtags!

Capitalization doesn’t matter on hashtags on Twitter: #SourceIT is the same as #SourceIt. I’ll use Tweetreach to get some sense of the reach of the terms…that’s a fluid number, though. If you click on the Tweetreach link, you can see lots of interesting things, including most active accounts using it, and recent tweets.

There are lots more…anybody can create a hashtag just by using it. There are many for individual genres, for example.

Update: I’m going to list more but I won’t always include the detail I did above:

#SFFPit (a twice a year day for authors to tweet descriptions of completed but unsold science fiction/fantasy novels in hopes of interesting an agent | I ran the numbers on one of those days (30 January 2019) at about 7:00 AM Pacific: 184,920 impressions

#author | 751,913 impressions

#book | 284,185 impressions

They also tend to use more universal ones, like #MondayMotivation and #FF (Follow Friday…you suggest accounts for people to follow).

Next, I want to mention some initialisms/acronyms you might see, and that people will generally assume you will understand. Tweets aren’t constrained to be as short as they used to be, but they are still short. Readers who go back close to a decade with me will know I did that for the Amazon forums (yes, I had to resist writing fora…I’m geeky like that). 😉 I’ll be happy to add things to this if you have suggestions:

WIP=Work in Progress

MC=Main Character

VSS=Very Short Story (I think that’s always one tweet)

TBR=To Be Read

Now, I’d like to mention a few specific accounts which I follow. Note that I don’t have any financial connection with them, and if I know any of them outside of Twitter, I’ll let you know. These are just a few highlights, not meant to diminish anybody I don’t list…

@AgathaChocolats | great six word writing prompts which get many responses | 18.9K followers

Well, hopefully, you’ve found this post helpful! Are there terms/accounts you think I should add to it? As a writer, do you find Twitter useful? Do you think having an active Twitter account is important for popularity/commercial success for a writer? Is it more distraction than it is worth? As a reader, have you discovered any writers you liked through Twitter? Has an interaction with an author with which you were already familiar (a like, mention, or reply from them) made your day? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

* I link to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

I have these bizarre mixed ideas of what product/service development at Amazon is like.

There are times when I see it as super high tech, like something Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne would have in their basements.

There are others when it feels like a mad scientist’s laboratory, in a castle on a imposing mountain with lightning crashing in the background, and mood lighting by Strickfaden (and, of course, controlled by Alexa).

Then there are times when it seems like the Invention Exchange segments on Mystery Science Theater 3000. 😉

The very basic idea, of being able to share how you feel about an Amazon product, makes sense. Of course, we can write reviews on Amazon, but I don’t think most people discover your comments that way. Not everything is a review, either…it might just be a comment or a question.

However…

This implementation is quite limited, at least at this point.

It only works through the Amazon Shopping App, and right now, only on iOS (Apple).

My concern there isn’t just that it isn’t available for Android: it’s that it can only be seen through the app, and that I can’t add things when I’m shopping on my computer.

That isn’t really very social for a social network. 😉

It makes it feel more like an attempt to lock people into using the app.

If that’s the case, I don’t think it’s going to get people to add one more social network into their day. I already don’t do Facebook much myself, because I don’t feel like I have the social energy/capital to spend on it. If I was active on Facebook, I can see how I would spend an hour a day, and I just don’t have that in terms of my creative priorities.

That’s going to be the case with Spark as well, although I did just post something to test it.

It took a while bouncing around to even get it to show up. It’s supposed to be in the menu under Programs and Features, but it wasn’t there for me at first.

The interface is not really intuitive, but it works okay. There isn’t enough discovery in the discovery yet.

It could work, but this one doesn’t seem like one of Amazon’s home runs to me. It’s like the posting we used to do in Kindle books…that eventually faded, even though it was an interesting idea.

I’ll be interested in your opinion on it, if you try it. Hm…somebody did just smile on my post, so it is already working. Maybe I’ll be wrong about this, which would be great!

In the mean time, I’ll keep waiting for Amazon to burst into the VAM (Virtual/Augmented/Merged/Mixed Reality) space, which I expect to happen later this year. 🙂

When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! 🙂

Goodreads is much bigger, and the vast majority of people won’t be negatively affected.

However, my readers are not “most people”. 😉

It wouldn’t surprise me if some of you are Shelfari users…as am I.

In terms of the books, they are making the transition pretty easy. There’s a tool where you can merge your Shelfari books with Goodreads, and you can also export the informationy as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, if you like. With the CSV, you can import them into Excel or many other spreadsheets, if you prefer. You can, of course, do both.

Be aware that the export might take a while…they are saying it could be a couple of days. They plan to complete the transition by March 16th of this year, so you do have some time.

However, I haven’t found anything addressing the continued survival of my favorite part of Shelfari: the “Book Extras” entered by users. This is what I noted about them before:

===

Description

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis

Summary

Characters (35 of them listed)

Popular Covers

Quotes

Settings & Locations

Organizations (in the book)

First sentence

Table of Contents

Glossary

Themes & Symbolism

Series & Lists

Authors & Contributors

First Edition

Awards

Classification

Notes for Parents

Subjects

Popular Tags

Links to Supplemental Material

Movie Connections

More Books Like This

Books Influenced by This Book

Books That Cite This Book

Amazon Customers Who Bought This Book Also Bought

There are also sections which are hidden by default: Errata; Books with Additional Background Information; and Books That Influenced This Book. I’m not quite sure why those are hidden. There is a “hide spoilers” checkbox which is selected by default (I really appreciate that!), but unchecking it didn’t make them show up.

===

As a database person, I love that! I contributed a bit to, for example, the A Princess of Mars page.

Goodreads has user-editable character descriptions and settings, but that’s about it…and they aren’t as rich at this point.

I’m going to write to

support@goodreads.com

to see if there are plans to migrate that.

I really hope they do!

While it would increase the size of Goodreads, and therefore might slow down some things (particularly on mobile), I think it would considerably enhance the value of Goodreads…and a lot more people would contribute to the Book Extras.

Heavy, long time users of Shelfari may have greater concerns.

They may be more concerned with what happens with the “Community” features, especially groups. Will those migrate?

Those people may be particularly passionate, however, when we look at actual numbers, they just aren’t that big for a company at the scale of Amazon. This is the “most active” group under genres:

I never want to see anything that anybody has written disappear. I honestly emotionally feel that when I put something on the internet, it will be there forever.

Logically, and experientially, I know that’s not true.

I’d put a lot of time and effort into the Sci-Fi Channel’s (now Syfy) community pages years ago…I was pretty proud of some of my writing in certain areas. That got shut down…I tried to save what I could, but some was lost.

For example, I’d written a nice piece on what I call the “Discovered Destiny” genre…where the main character finds out that they have some unusual nature, powers, and responsibility. Harry Potter is an example, but there are lots of them.

I’m going to try to get more information about what will transition here, as I mentioned, and I’ll share it with you if I do.

I completely understand Amazon doing this…that’s why I predicted it. 🙂 It makes more sense to have one site rather than two, even when they are complementary. Like most people, though, I always want the best of both worlds. 🙂

What about LibraryThing?

I think it’s safe for now.

It’s ownership is in a different class, and it has a lot more members than Shelfari did.

I checked and there hasn’t been much news coverage on this…I wanted to make sure you heard about it, so you can take appropriate action.

What do you think? Were you a Shelfari user? Would you care about having the data features I mentioned on Goodreads, or would that make it too busy? When you write something on the internet, do you think it is forever, or ephemeral? If the latter, do you back it up yourself? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Like this:

When Amazon bought Goodreads (a bit over a year ago), one of the advantages people envisaged (and certainly, some people thought there might be disadvantages as well) was the ability to easily import your Amazon purchases to your Goodreads shelves.

We did get the ability to do that from some Kindle devices. For example, you have that functionality on the Kindle Paperwhite.

That was fine for people with those devices, but there are lots of Goodreads users who have bought books from Amazon and don’t have Kindles (or at least, those specific devices). The import isn’t just for Kindle editions…it’s for p-books (paperbooks) also.

They have a Question and Answer section there. I’ve asked this, but don’t have an answer yet:

“This seems to be similar to the functionality on the Kindle devices (for the ones which have it). It is only showing me recently purchased books, and I have something like a thousand which haven’t been imported. My guess is that there might have been a size limit the first time it did the sync, and now it doesn’t go back and re-query, just starts with books after the last sync (yes, I’m a geek). 🙂 Any troubleshooting for it not importing all of the books? Are there books which wouldn’t be imported (ones without ISBNs, perhaps)? Thanks! “

Why do this?

Mainly to “feed” Goodreads. It lets other people see what you are reading (if you choose that), helps you keep track for yourself…and strengthens the algorithms used by the system to make recommendations to you.

For those of you who are already Goodreads users, this simplifies things. If you don’t use Goodreads now (I do…you can follow me. I write a little review there on most books I finish), maybe this will get you to start. 😉

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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When Amazon bought goodreads (and that’s how it is capitalized on the site), I was one of those people who wasn’t really using it, but was using Amazon extensively.

Honestly, it was a question of not wanting to divide my attention even more. I already have a family, a full time (and then some) job, write at least an average of 1,000 words a day in this blog, have two other blogs (neither of which takes a lot of time), spend large amounts of time helping out in the Kindle forums as a Kindle Forum Pro, and, oh yeah, write a book every once in a while. 😉

Something has to show real value for me to spend time and energy on it.

As Amazon has integrated goodreads more into the Kindleverse, I’ve gotten into using it a bit.

I’m still no expert, certainly.

I just decided today to make some things more public. I’ve allowed people to follow my reviews, for example. When I’ve polled my readers here about features, reviews have not come out high on the list. Still, I enjoy writing them (and haven’t completely abandoned them here), and I figure somebody might like to see them. 🙂

My understanding is that my reviews have already been showing up on the Goodreads’ page for that book…I don’t think you can stop that. Now, though, someone can elect to “follow” them, and they’ll be notified when I write a new one.

I know some of you readers are well-versed in Goodreads. I’d appreciate some advice: will this somehow mean that I have a lot of things to which to attend? Am I going to be approving Friends frequently, for example?

Well, I thought you would want to know. 😉

Here’s how I’m using it:

I do add books to it as I get them, and at some point, I’ll add a lot more of the books I own in paper. That’s not as easy as it seems: I know you can scan barcodes on them, but many of the books I have seem to predate any useful scannable marks. 🙂

I wish there was some other categorization than “want to read”, “read”, and “currently reading” when you add a book. Maybe I can add a shelf of some kind and do that?

When I finish a book, I am marking it as finished and adding a rating and a review.

For me, that’s the sort of addictive part at this point. 🙂 It’s not the writing of the review so much: it’s my natural tendency to be honest and accurate. If I said I was currently reading it, and then I finished it, I want to change it.

Some of the books which say “currently reading” may be ones that I haven’t read in weeks…but which I am still in the process of reading. I have some books into which I just dip from time to time…maybe with text-to-speech during a car ride.

I plan to eventually finish them. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t abandon a book.

No doubt, the “currently reading” status on some of my books will outlast me: gee, do they have a setting for “was reading it, but no longer alive”? 😉

I find the interface, even at the site, to be a bit glitchy (or perhaps it works mechanically and is just not intuitive). For example, there is a listing on the homescreen (on the website) of books I’m reading. Every time I try and update one from there to “read”, I get a red “Error” message. I appear to have to go to my Books first, and do it there.

In terms of the integration with our Kindles, I don’t find I use that very much. I suppose that might change, now. I just accepted my first “Friend” request, and that person’s reading is showing up. That might be interesting.

The “Add Your Amazon Books” only seems to go back so far. If it would add all my books from Amazon (we have over 3,000 Kindle books), that would be great…but it doesn’t. It’s a decent help for adding new purchases.

Well, I think what I’ll do at this point is open it up to you. What’s the best thing about Goodreads for you? Do you find it effective on your Kindle? Are there any settings or activities you’d recommend for me? Any warnings? 😉 Feel free to let me know by commenting on this post.

Update: here’s another example of the difficulties I encounter using goodreads..

I recently bought a book, and wanted to add it to my goodreads books. There was a book there with the same ISBN and a similar title…but the entry was very incomplete. The author’s name was incomplete, and the publisher was different.

I first had tried entering it as a new book. It wouldn’t allow that, because the ISBN was different. That’s reasonable: cuts down on duplicate books.

I tried entering it as another edition of the first book, which is probably the case. It had a link for that, but wouldn’t let me do it. It wouldn’t accept it with the same ISBN, of course, but I had clicked “add a new edition”.

I tried editing the details of the first listing: I didn’t have the authority.

I ended up entering it as a book without an ISBN…so now, there are two listings for the book. I left in the note in the decription explaining the situation…hopefully, someone else can fix it.

Bonus deal:

Amazon does “Kindle Countdown Deals”. Those are limited time offers on Kindle books…you can actually see when they will no longer be on sale.

I checked it out quite a bit when it first started happening, but I was having trouble with discovery…I couldn’t find books I wanted.

This sort will show you the highest rated books first. That can make it easier to find something that you’ll enjoy (and often for ninety-nine cents).

Amazon’s “average customer review” isn’t a simple averaging…there are a lot of books with a single review which is five-stars, but they don’t show up at the top here.

When I look at reviews on Amazon, I do take into account the number of stars…but I also consider the number of reviews. I would have more confidence in a book with a 4.8 rating and a 1,000 reviews than a book with a 5.0 rating (a perfect score) and ten reviews.

That’s not to say that my tastes and the tastes of the majority always match. It’s just that it is easier to manipulate the ratings when there are fewer people involved.

You also have to consider who tends to review books. More recent books are likely to have a lot more reviews than older books. I doubt very many people go back to their favorite books which they read years ago and add a review. I think that’s why you’ll see more reviews on something like The Hunger Games than on, oh, Tom Sawyer.

One other thing (and it’s a big one) about this sort: it’s a great way to find books you can borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library! You’ll see that you can borrow them here, and even choose categories. Remember that you’ll have to actually borrow them from your hardware Kindle, but this at least is a way to find them on your computer. Enjoy!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The mystery novels under the name Elizabeth Peters (including the Amelia Peabody books) have been very popular…as have been the books of Barbara Michaels, including the Georgetown series. Those were both pennames for Barbara Mertz, who also wrote non-fiction about Egypt under her real name,

I updated that post when I had heard that 8.4.6 was out there, and that it didn’t have the same problem.

Well, my Kindle Fire did update last night…and I’m happy to report that Flash video is working fine in Maxthon (my preferred browser). In fact, it seems like it is working better, but it’s too soon to really tell that.

If your Kindle Fire hasn’t updated, it likely will soon now. You can also get the update from

You can now choose Brazilian Portuguese for your device language (Home – swipe down – More – Language & Keyboard – Language…that brings us to eleven languages and variants)

You can download new keyboard languages (Home – swipe down – More – Language & Keyboard – Keyboard – Download Keyboard Languages). That’s a fascinating change! There are thirty-seven languages there, and even with a linguist in the family, I can’t tell you what they all are (since they are listed in their languages. They do include Russian and Tagalog, Hinglish and Magyar…quite a few choices. While this will greatly expand the usability of the Kindle Fire, this ability to download the languages is what’s intriguing me. That suggest to me that we could possibly get the same thing with accents and languages for text-to-speech…not that we don’t likeSeptember Day‘s Salli, of course, but more choices there could again expand the language accessibility. Could this also suggest a launch of a Fire in even more countries? Well, last I heard, it was already available for 170 countries, so maybe not

Multicolor highlights (highlight something in a book with your finger or stylus, and you’ll now be given four different highlighting colors from which to choose)

Share notes & highlights from a Print Replica textbook. The particularly interesting piece here is that you’ll be able to share them via e-mail…that could be the start of something big for Amazon. Not just e-mailing, of course, but texting (in the future). I frequently e-mail stories to family members from my morning Flipboard read. I know e-mail isn’t the choice method of communication for many New Millenials (which is why I’m also thinking texting, in the future), but tweeting and Facebook updates don’t work for everybody either

All in all, I’m happy Amazon fixed the problem with Flash before posting the updates.

Update: here are screenshots of the keyboard languages available for download, and some best guesses (not all mine…my adult kid who is a linguist helped, as did someone else) as to what they are. If you can correct any of them, I’d appreciate it:

I know there can be cultural sensitivities in some of these identifications…if there is something you think should be corrected there, please let me know. No offense is intended, and I freely admit I might be ignorant of some of the issues.

and other sources. I’ve written before about how far-reaching the DoJ proposal seems to be. The five Agency Model publishers think it’s too much…but they aren’t exactly uninvolved parties (they settled with the DoJ in the same case). Others think it’s appropriate.

It will be very interesting to see what Judge Cote does. I think it’s possible that part of it is approved and part of it isn’t, but we’ll see. I’m not sure if Judge Cote would then send them back to rethink it or what can happen.

It’s a pretty extensive list…given my love of books and movies, I did find it fascinating (and I had seen a number of them). It’s not being maintained anymore, but is still interesting. Let’s see…any movies this Summer with librarians in them? Hm…

Have any thoughts about these stories? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

When I first heard about it, I speculated a bit that they might shut down Shelfari (another social reading site which Amazon owns), and fold it into Goodreads.

However, I also said I wanted to investigate Goodreads more, and my hope now is that they don’t do that without combining features.

The two of them actually function quite differently…as does LibraryThing. Amazon owns Abebooks, which has, I think, a 40% stake in LibraryThing…but LT has emphatically said that they are not owned by Amazon, which I think is a reasonable interpretation.

I wanted to go through here and compare the three. This isn’t to say that you (or Amazon) have to pick one…you can use all three. Right now, though, that would mean entering your books into each of them (although there is some possibility of importing), so you’d have to think about it.

With any site with a social factor, you also have to consider the “social capital” you have to spend on it to be a “good citizen”. That’s why I don’t use Facebook: I know I couldn’t expand my energy and attention to the point where I wouldn’t anger people with non-responsiveness there. I already have “real life”, my job, this blog, my other writings, and the Amazon forums. People who e-mail me realize, I hope, that I won’t always get back to them quickly. Being on Facebook, too? I just don’t have the bandwidth.

Before I get started, let me say that I’m going to look at different aspects. One key question: do you use the site to catalog and analyze and share what you are already own, or to discover new things to read? You could certainly do both, but my immediate thought for a site like this is the former. I want to catalogue my books, and record information about them. That’s probably not why Amazon bought Goodreads. They clearly want sites like this to drive future sales. Understanding you is helpful in that regard, but they probably don’t care that you put five different versions of the same book on your “shelves” to reflect your paper collections.

I know this isn’t current right now, but it’s in the public consciousness. I also thought it was one where one could expect a lot of activity. I’m just doing the first book, not the series, for the sake of comparison. So, how does each site treat it?

Weirdly, I”m not seeing an actual numeric average of the reviews, although I can see that on Amazon. It looks like about 4.5 stars on a scale of 1 to 5. There are 22, 747 reviews, and I’m told that 110,324 members have it (I can see a list of members by clicking).

The first thing I see are the Book Extras: that’s where you can get a wiki type listing of details. Those sections include

Description

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis

Summary

Characters (35 of them listed)

Popular Covers

Quotes

Settings & Locations

Organizations (in the book)

First sentence

Table of Contents

Glossary

Themes & Symbolism

Series & Lists

Authors & Contributors

First Edition

Awards

Classification

Notes for Parents

Subjects

Popular Tags

Links to Supplemental Material

Movie Connections

More Books Like This

Books Influenced by This Book

Books That Cite This Book

Amazon Customers Who Bought This Book Also Bought

There are also sections which are hidden by default: Errata; Books with Additional Background Information; and Books That Influenced This Book. I’m not quite sure why those are hidden. There is a “hide spoilers” checkbox which is selected by default (I really appreciate that!), but unchecking it didn’t make them show up.

In addition to the Book Extras tab, there are tabs for Readers & Reviews, Discussions, and Editions (Shelfari lists 258 of those).

You can buy the book, but it links just to Amazon or Abebooks (which is part of the Amazon family) for collectible editions.

You can share the book on social media.

There is a sidebar where members can ask questions, and get answers (by people voting yes or no).

Recent editors are shown.

Members, Group, and Lists with this book are linked.

You can read the first chapter for free.

This page has more of the geeky kind of detail about the book I find interesting than the Goodreads page. I’d say that Goodreads feels more modern and more shallow (outside of reviews), and Shelfari feels more scholarly, in a pop culture sort of way.

Quicklinks (including purchasing and getting it at the library through WorldCat)

Current Discussion

Popular covers (159 listed)

Ratings (broken down with numbers for each number of stars)

Audible

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alumn (it’s a program where you can get pre-publication copies)

Is this you? (an author program)

Advanced

There aren’t as many reviews here, and I would describe the feel of this page as funky. 🙂 The “Common Knowledge” seems more fun than the Book Extras, but hasn’t been completed as much (a lot of things were blank).

Goodreads reportedly has more than 16 million members…when you think about the total number of “serious readers” in the USA, that’s a really sizable chunk (it wouldn’t surprise me if it is half of the people who buy, oh, more than 100 books a year).

and there are a couple of interesting things there. One, this means Goodreads is hiring, and two, they want to know what integration you want between your Kindle and Goodreads.

Now, I want to point out that this may not mean a lot of changes at Goodreads (outside of that integration thing). IMDb.com was the best movie reference site on the web (in my opinion) before Amazon bought it, and it still is.

The obvious question for me is, what happens to Shelfari?

I have an account there, and I have used it some. Social sites take a lot of work in you personalizing your use of it (ask the doomed Google Reader what people think when you take something away). Migrating to a new one is like moving to a new school when your are ten years old. It might be a better school, but it’s a still a hard adjustment.

Amazon just could keep running them both, but my guess is that they will migrate Shelfari accounts to Goodreads, and shut down the former eventually.

That’s going to be a bit complicated, because they aren’t the same, but there probably is a lot of duplication of features.

My guess is, though, that this is going to result in a better site for Amazon users. I do think they’ll lose some of the anti-ammys (People who are against Amazon…I just made that one up), but they’ll make up for it with other people.

The acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of June of this year.

I’m looking forward to it, but I know that might not be your reaction. I’ve been a Shelfari user, but not really a Goodreads one (I’m going to start exploring the Goodreads options). Part of that was because you could import your books from Amazon to Shelfari, and I assume they’ll add that to Goodreads later.

I’m not quite ready to poll about what features you would like this to bring to the Kindle service, but feel free to make suggestions by commenting on this post. I’m particularly interested in what you love about Goodreads. 🙂

Thanks to my reader, Ed Foster, for giving me a heads-up on this! I saw the press release first, but it’s always appreciated. Ed linked to this

Like this:

As I’ve written before, I think Amazon should get a lot more social on the e-book side.

Books should be as much a part of our lives as TV shows or songs. That’s going to be a bit controversial to say, I know. For many people, books (certainly some books) are an intimate, private thing. I recently wrote about whether or not it was good that strangers can’t see what you are reading when you are using an EBR (E-Book Reader).

However, in a world in which people freely share personal details that would have previously only been seen in their medical records, there are many folks who want to share what they are reading.

I think part of that is that we have to interact with and through technology so much that we want there to be a human side to it. If you had to sit down to spreadsheets for eight hours in a day (not that spreadsheets can’t be fun) 😉 with no possibility of that time including human beings, you’d be much less likely to do it. If you can do a quick e-mail, chat, or even just see strangers on YouTube, it much more closely fits what we Homo sapiens are comfortable doing.

I’ve had those conversations with employers who want to block all access to the internet (and personal phone calls) when employees are working. In my opinion, that’s a huge mistake. If people consider their “personal lives” part of their work lives, and vice versa, they’ll spend a lot more time on work. If you spend half an hour a day at work on family and friends, I can pretty much guarantee you that you will spend more than half an hour a day on work when you are at home. If a company draws a hard and fast line, the employee may not want to spend any time at home on work.

So, if we want to be social while we are doing other things online, I think it’s natural.

Companies can work with that truth, and make book reading (and therefore buying) part of our social lives and vice versa.

Let me give you an example (that some of you will likely reflexively hate). 😉

When I managed a brick and mortar bookstore, and especially when I was a customer in many of them, there would be times when conversations would begin in an aisle. One person might ask another person for advice on making a choice, or maybe say, “Oh, I love that author! Have you tried this one?” I’m sure that lifelong friendships (and romantic relationships) were begun that way.

Of course, you didn’t start taking to someone until you had checked out their body language to see that they would be okay with it.

What if, while you were shopping for a book on Amazon, you had the option to chat with someone else looking at the same (or similar, but that would be more difficult) book at the same time? That person would have to have chosen to be visible. Maybe you would see that there were two hundred people looking at that same book at the same time. Perhaps you could see where they were geographically located, and you might see them making comments (like overhearing them in a store). You could chose to privately or publicly chat with them.

You would see their screen names (like we do in the Amazon forums). If they wanted that to be their real names (I use mine), that’s fine, but it could be something else, which might indicate an interest in common with yours (“PlatypusOfDoomFan42”, “NutsAboutKnitsInMacedonia”).

I think people would spend more time hanging out at Amazon…just as they spent time (sometimes every day) in my brick and mortar bookstore.

Would there be risks? Sure. It’s easier to pretend to be someone else online for nefarious purposes. Might somebody spam you? You bet. It’s the exact same risks we have in the Amazon forums, and there are methods to report “abuse” which could be similarly used.

One way to do deal with that would be to have, as I have recommended, “circles of friends”…maybe “book buddies”? “Kindle Klubs?” that you have previously designated, and only see them.

That’s just one idea.

Random House, which has often led the way among tradpubs (traditional publishers), is releasing an app tomorrow called BookScout.

“The app is the culmination of months of work by Random House’s digital marketplace development group.”

See? A tradpub with a “digital marketplace development group”. While I suspect they may not be eating lunch at the same table as editors who have been there for decades 😉 I think that’s a sign that some tradpubs will figure out the new market and do just fine.

It’s also important to note that this isn’t just an app about Random House books…it will include discovery for books from other publishers.

That’s another key point for me in business: you don’t have to eliminate the competition if you can grow the overall market. More people reading is good for Random House (as long as it maintains decent marketshare), even if they are sometimes reading books from other people. Social interactivity can increase the penetration of books into our lives…a “rising tide that floats all books”, so to speak. 😉

Will I be using the new Random House app?

Nope…it’s Facebook dependent, and I don’t use Facebook. I have nothing against Facebook (the third largest country in the world by population), it’s just that I have this feeling it would be like taking on another full time job for me.

Amazon could increase discovery among Amazon customers…and all of their customers already are that. 🙂

What do you think? Are you going to use the Random House app? Is your reading experience already social enough, thank you very much? 😉 Have you ever started a relationship (of any kind) with a stranger from meeting in a bookstore? Should Amazon have their own “bookstore clerks” who are available for live chat on the product pages? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Update: thanks to reader and frequent commenter Tom Semple for pointing out an error in this post which has now been corrected.

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